Arlington's Robbins Library explains culling of its collection

When you hear the word "weeding," you probably think about gardens, but in libraries, weeding can also refer to books.

Jenny Arch/Special to the Arlington Advocate

When you hear the word "weeding," you probably think about gardens, but in libraries, weeding can also refer to books.

Though we sometimes call it by fancier names (deaccessioning, deselecting, withdrawal), librarians do "weed" the library collection on a regular basis; weeding enables us to withdraw items that are no longer useful or appealing, making room for new items and providing a more pleasant browsing experience for library patrons.

Each librarian in the Adult, Young Adult, and Children’s departments is responsible for part of the library collection; we work to develop and maintain the library’s collection of books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, newspapers, Playaways, and games. One aspect of collection development is the selection of materials: reading reviews, choosing and ordering new items. The flip side is deselection, otherwise known as weeding.

Why on earth would librarians, who love books, get rid of them? Well, there are several reasons.

First there is the simple matter of space: every year, librarians buy books to put on the shelves for the education and entertainment of library patrons. However, shelf space is limited, and does not expand into infinity, except in those wonderful imaginary libraries; eventually, some of what comes in must go out. This may come as a surprise: aren’t libraries supposed to keep books, not throw them out?

Yes and no: Public libraries have a different mission than state libraries or archives: we connect people and resources, but we don't strive to preserve every book that comes through our doors. That task is for the Library of Congress, state libraries, archives, museums, and the Internet Archive.

Our mission statement reads, "The Robbins Library is a vital community center that connects people with traditional and technological resources for life-long learning, intellectual pursuits and leisure. The library responds to citizens’ needs with services and activities in a welcoming setting built on a history of free and equal access to information for all Arlington residents." Clearly, keeping every book isn’t part of our mission; so then how do we decide what to keep and what to remove? Fortunately, there are some criteria to guide our decisions. As the library world is an acronym-happy one, we have two acronyms to guide us: CREW (Continuous Review, Evaluation, and Weeding) and the apt MUSTIE (Misleading, Ugly, Superseded, Trivial, Elsewhere).

Misleading: factually inaccurate. The public library is the place where anyone can come to learn. We would be irresponsible if we kept medical books from the 1960s on the shelves, for example: the information in those books would be dangerously out of date by now, yet not every reader knows to check the publication date; patrons expect us to provide accurate, reliable, current information.

Ugly: worn out or damaged beyond repair. No one likes to browse through books that are dusty, have torn covers or missing pages, are water-damaged, or - worst of all - books that are moldy. If an "ugly" book still has appeal, we can replace it with a new edition. Don't worry - Pride and Prejudice will never disappear from the collection.

Superseded: there is a newer edition of the book, or a better book on the same topic. Take books about outer space: scientists discover new things and disprove old theories constantly (see Exhibit A, Pluto, recently demoted from planethood). In science, technology and medicine, we need to buy new books frequently to keep up with the pace of change, and the old books with outdated information are no longer necessary. Even fiction can be superseded: classic works may have new introductions, and popular favorites may have new cover designs...especially if they were originally published in the 1980s.

Trivial: of no literary or scientific merit. Sometimes, even if a book was popular when it was first published, it doesn't have lasting appeal or worth.

Irrelevant: not useful or interesting to the community. "Irrelevance" is often reflected in a book’s circulation statistics; if it hasn’t been checked out at all in the past few years, it’s not likely to be in demand in the future, either. It might be "interesting" to someone, just not to the folks around here.

Elsewhere: the item can be obtained from another library. Here, the beauty of being part of a consortium - in our case, the Minuteman Library Network - is apparent. No library has room for everything, but before we get rid of anything, we can make sure it's still available from somewhere else. Remember, if a book isn't available from any of the Minuteman libraries, we can often get it through the state network, Virtual Catalog, or even the worldwide network, WorldCat.

Another factor we take into serious consideration is circulation: how often has a book been checked out in recent years? If a book is still popular, we'll keep it on the shelf, or, if it's falling to pieces, we'll replace it with a new edition. However, there are, sadly, plenty of books that don’t get checked out at all for years at a time, and most likely these books also fall into one of the MUSTIE categories.

The question that arises from the weeding process is, naturally, what happens to the books the library discards? Each library has a different solution. In Arlington, some of our withdrawn books - the former Speed Reads, for example - go to the Friends of the Library book sale. Most, however, are donated to More Than Words, "a nonprofit social enterprise that empowers youth who are in the foster care system, court involved, homeless, or out of school to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business." Located in Waltham, MTW is a retail and online used book business, and they are happy to partner with libraries and receive donations of the books we withdraw from our collection.

No one loves books more than librarians do, and getting rid of books is hard, but it is necessary. We must remember that, to paraphrase blogger Julie Goldberg, books are valuable not simply because they are books - printed on paper, bound with glue, covered in cardboard - but because of what is in them, and because of the "alchemy that happens when the mind of a gifted writer touches the mind of an engaged reader."

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